September 02, 2009

I Can Has Cheezburger: The Musiclol

I was probably one of the last people on the internet to know what a
lolcat was. See I'm a dog person and if there had been loldogs, I'd
have known all about 'em. But grammatically challenged pussycats? Not
so much. "I has funnie pitchures and capshuns? Wut you talkin' bout
Kitty?"

Of
course I'd seen a couple of funny cat pictures with cutesy sayings and
I'd seen the phrase, "I Can Has Cheezburger" but I just thought it was
some wise acre blogger poking fun at McDonalds. It wasn't until I was
assigned to go see the "I Can Has Cheezburger, The MusicLOL"
at the Cherry Lane Theatre in New York that I truly understood the
size, the scope and the power of the monstrous lolcat phenomenon.

First, for the four or five of you who don't know what a lolcat is, a little lolcat history.
Way back in the dawn of the internet age, some guys and gals were
sitting around taking pictures of their pussycats. They uploaded 'em
to the web and to make them even more funnie, rote capshuns for 'em in
a kitty pidgin Englush.

They called 'em lolcats--meaning
"laughing out loud cats"--and before you could say "humanz is suckers,"
lolcats were everywhere.

Here's a documentary by Ben Burns, the long lost brother of documentarian Ken Burns, that details even more lolcat history:

Eva Thury of When Falls the Coliseum recently explained her theory about why "radioactive lolcats" are such a big deal:

The humor is predicated on an image of cats as
bimodal: endearing but powerful, and affectionately resentful of the
humans who give them shelter. A fairly typical one shows a cat sitting
on a computer keyboard, with the caption, “I sez SYSTEM IZ DOWN:
Petting will now commence.”

There was the "I Can Has Cheezburger" book, based on the website--check out the interview my fellow CE Super Jive did with the authors last year--and now comes the musiclol.

Written by Kristyn Pomranz and Katherine Steinberg, the musiclol tells the tale of the original lolcat (Seth Grugle) who wanted that legendary cheezburger:

After
being uploaded to ICanHasCheezburger.com, a young, impressionable
LOLcat embarks on a journey to find his one true love: A cheezburger.
Along the way, he meets a colorful cast of characters who help — and
hinder — his mission.

Along the way, he has to do
battle with Mr. Wrong (Clint Carter), makes friends with Drop (Bryan
Welnicki) and romances the keeper of the cheese herself, Jodie the
mouse (Carly Zien).

A parade of actual lolcat photos are
projected in the background throughout this fanciful tale of kitty
kravings, and who could help but laugh at the evil antics of Mr. Wrong
as he tries keep the innocent Lolcat under his spell using the promise
of that elusive cheezburger?

Yes the musiclol was cuter than cute
and I wanted to slap Lolcat a couple of times, but the delightful
performances by Clint Carter, Bryan Welnicki and Lauren Kampf who plays
Sumz, and some of the catchy tunes, made up for any of the musiclol's
shortcomings. And the audience I saw it with was ROFLMAO throughout
the show.

However, not everyone loves the lolcat kitty kraze. Matthew Gasteier created the FU Pequin Blog partly in response to the lolcat phenomenon. Just last week my fellow CE ClizBiz did a Babs Walters on Matthew's butt to find out what he has against our cute, furry friends. His answers may surprise you.

Marie of the At The Lighthouse blog isn't
quite so sure about Yale's conclusions that an obsession with lolcats
indicates humans are conditioned to monitor the animals in their lives
because of the hunting instinct:

No, for me the
allure of lolcats is definitely rooted in humanities, rather than in
biology, with that whole evolutional hunter-instinct thing. It’s fun
to imagine that things and animals around us have human minds to match
our human minds.

I think Marie has a point that when
it comes to animals, humans are more comfortable when they can imagine
their pets as cognizant as they are. After all, that's the way we get
to create fanciful cheezburger lovin' worlds for them.

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I Can Has Cheezburger: The Musiclol

I was probably one of the last people on the internet to know what a
lolcat was. See I'm a dog person and if there had been loldogs, I'd
have known all about 'em. But grammatically challenged pussycats? Not
so much. "I has funnie pitchures and capshuns? Wut you talkin' bout
Kitty?"

Of
course I'd seen a couple of funny cat pictures with cutesy sayings and
I'd seen the phrase, "I Can Has Cheezburger" but I just thought it was
some wise acre blogger poking fun at McDonalds. It wasn't until I was
assigned to go see the "I Can Has Cheezburger, The MusicLOL"
at the Cherry Lane Theatre in New York that I truly understood the
size, the scope and the power of the monstrous lolcat phenomenon.